RESOURCE PAGE: Artificial Intelligence
Conversation Series with Tripp Fuller & Kester Brewin
Welcome to Process This: Artificial Intelligence - a Substack conversation series (June/July 2024) with Kester Brewin, author of God-like: A 500-Year History of Artificial Intelligence in Myths, Machines, Monsters. This is the Conversation Resource Page where you’ll find everything related to the series including livestreams, weekly expert interviews, and a growing list of curated resources on the topic. Be sure to subscribe to get full access and receive email updates!
To get started, I recommend listening to these two foundational conversations…
Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Religion - Kester Brewin
The Sherpa of the Technium and Future Czar of Technology - Kevin Kelly
You can nail 95 theses to the door of a church, but the printing press catalyzes the Reformation, not the act of nailing itself.
You can invent a steam engine and a mechanical loom, but you only get an industrial revolution with a theology that sees poor people's hard labor as sanctifying.
You can build plantations, but you can't get an industrial complex of slavery without a theology that sees black Africans as less than human.
The connection between society and technology does not mean technology is innately spiritual or determinative. It does suggest, however, that technologies – and the industrial complexes within which they interact with our labor - emerge within a socio-cultural context, and the overarching, perhaps invisible belief structures that frame people's lives are the forge within which technologies are shaped into tools that we turn to use.
When we reflect on the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, we see more than historical events. We see profound shifts in ontology, community, labor, and even resistance. Similarly, the current era may herald a similar shift, raising significant ethical and moral questions that demand attention to GenAI tools.
In our first Process This series, we will explore Artificial Intelligence and how it is and may shape the human future. We will be joined by thought leaders across different disciplines, all bringing unique insights and raising essential questions as we face our shared horizon as a species. Too often, we give in to the temptation to outsource critical reflection about the culture-shaping power of technology to its pioneers and then learn how to accommodate to the world it creates.
AI is more than a fascinating new technology. We must recognize it as a potent force that will reverberate with the far-reaching impacts of the printing press and the steam engine. These impacts, with their significant theological implications about human value and flourishing, should raise our concern and demand immediate attention. That is our goal with Process This: Artificial Intelligence & the Human Future. We hope you join us.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Some of the content will be available to subscribers for free, but paid subscribers who support the conversation get exclusive access to the full-length, ad-free expert interviews, Substack Chat conversations with Tripp, and the Integration Livestream. We highly encourage you to get the Substack app!
Watch the livestream replay featuring Tripp Fuller and Kester Brewin, author of God-like: A 500-Year History of Artificial Intelligence in Myths, Machines, Monsters.
Interviews will be released weekly and linked below. Scroll down for bios.
Noreen Herzfeld - Saint Johns University, author of The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic Age. Listen here or ad-free for members!
Lord Tim Clement-Jones - Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence and author of Living with the Algorithm – Servant or Master?. Listen here.
Michael Morelli - Northwest Seminary & College, author of Theology, Ethics, and Technology in the Work of Jacques Ellul and Paul Virilio. Listen here or ad-free for members!
Anne Foerst - St. Bonaventure University, author of God in the Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God. Listen here or ad-free for members!
John D. Caputo - Syracuse University, Villanova University. Listen here or ad-free for members!
Robert Wright - The Nonzero Foundation, author of Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Listen here or ad-free for members!
Ilia Delio - Villanova University, author of Re-Enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion. Watch here, listen here, or ad-free for members!
Sir Christopher Pissarides - Nobel Prize-winning economist. Listen here or ad-free for members!
Brent Waters - Emeritus Jerre and Mary Joy Professor of Christian Social Ethics, and Emeritus Director of the Jerre L. and Mary Joy Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Listen here or ad-free for members!
Support the conversation by becoming a paid subscriber to get access to the full-length, ad-free interviews as well as the Integration Livestream.
FOUNDATIONAL CONVERSATIONS
Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Religion - Kester Brewin
The Sherpa of the Technium and Future Czar of Technology - Kevin Kelly
GETTING STARTED
Frankenstein - Mary Shelly
Red Hand Files Issue #218 - Nick Cave
God Human Animal Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning - Meghan O’Gieblyn
“The Religious Foundations of Transhumanism” (Tech Won’t Save Us Podcast) - Megan O’Gieblyn
A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going - Michael Wooldridge
Artificial Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction - Margaret A. Boden
DIVING DEEPER
The Art of Living For a Technological Age - Ashley John Moyse
Religion and Artificial Intelligence (forthcoming) - Beth Singler
Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman back to Human - Brent Waters
Administration of Fear - Paul Virilio
Presence in the Modern World - Jacques Ellul
SUBSTACK MUST-READS
Technology
Reminding Us We Are Human
Each week, Tripp will post a thought / question in Substack Chat, and paid subscribers will have the opportunity to dialogue on the subject. Chat can be accessed through the Substack app or website.
“Processing Artificial Intelligence”
Livestream featuring Tripp Fuller and Kester Brewin
Monday, September 30th (10am PT / 1pm ET)
Watch via YouTube livestream featuring a conversation between Tripp and Kester to integrate all that we’ve learned from our expert interviews.
To get access to the Integration Livesteam, we invite you to become a paid subscriber and support the conversation.
Support the conversation by becoming a paid subscriber, and you’ll get access to the full-length, ad-free expert interviews, Substack Chat conversations with Tripp, and the Integration Livestream. We highly encourage you to get the Substack app!
TRIPP FULLER is the host of Process This, Theology Class, and the Homebrewed Christianity podcast where he interviews top scholars about their work – with over four million downloads just last year. Having recently completed a three-year Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Theology & Science at the University of Edinburg, he is now a visiting Professor of Theology at Luther Theological Seminary. He recently released Divine Self-Investment: a Constructive Open and Relational Christology and a book series with Fortress Press called the Homebrewed Christianity Guides to… topics like God, Jesus, Spirit, Church History, etc. He received his PhD in Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Claremont Graduate University.
KESTER BREWIN is the author of God-like: A 500-Year History of Artificial Intelligence in Myths, Machines, Monsters and Head of Communications at Institute for the Future of Work in London. The author of a number of celebrated books of non-fiction, notably Mutiny - an exploration of the impact of pirate culture, and Getting High - a history of the human quest for flight, he has twice presented at the UK's premier TEDx event and spoken on his work across the US and Europe. An excerpt from Middle Class was shortlisted for The Bridport Prize in 2020, and his story The Rot was shortlisted for the Dinesh Prize for Short Fiction in 2022. He lives in London with his two teenage children. www.kesterbrewin.com
MICHAEL BURDETT is Assistant Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Nottingham and a Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford. Before becoming an academic, Michael worked in the aerospace and robotics industries for several years working with a firm that had contracts with NASA and JPL. He holds degrees in engineering, physics, and theology and has been given academic and professional awards in each field. His academic interests lie at the intersection of science and technology, theology and philosophy. He has published and presented internationally on continental philosophy, transhumanism, the technological society and Christian theology. He has lead several grants including “Co-creating Ourselves?: Deification and Creaturehood in an Age of Biotechnological Enhancement” (JTF), “Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and Humanities” (TRT and Blankemeyer) and “Christian Flourishing in a Technological World” (Issachar).
JOHN D. CAPUTO is a hybrid philosopher/theologian who works in the area of radical theology. Prof. Caputo has spearheaded a notion he calls “weak theology,” by which he means a “poetics” of the “event” that is harbored in the name (of) God, or that “insists” in the name (of) “God,” a notion that depends upon a reworking of the notions of event in Derrida to theological ends. In his majors works he has argued that interpretation goes all the way down (Radical Hermeneutics, 1987), that Derrida is a thinker to be reckoned with by theology (The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, 1997), that theology is best served by getting over its love affair with power and authority and embracing what Caputo calls, taking a phrase from St. Paul, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (2006), which won the American Academy of Religion award for excellence in the category of constructive theology. In The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps (2013), Caputo argues that God does not exist, God insists, and that God’s existence depends upon us. He has also a special interest in addressing more general audiences, which can be seen in books like On Religion (1971), What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (2006), Philosophy and Theology, and Truth (2013), which is part of the Penguin Books “Philosophy in Transit” series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. Since retiring in 2011, he has been speaking to various church and community groups interested in a more progressive concept of religion. www.facebook.com/John.D.Caputo
LORD TIM CLEMENT-JONES was Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence (2017-18) and is Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence. He is Deputy Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on China and Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Digital Regulation, The Future of Work, Music, Performers Alliance, Publishing, Writers and Intellectual Property. Tim was an external member of the Council of University College London and Chair of its Audit Committee from 2012 to 2017. Tim was made CBE for political services in 1988 and a life peer in 1998. Until July 2004 he was the Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson in the House of Lords and thereafter until 2010 Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on Culture, Media and Sport, in the House of Lords. He is now the Liberal Democrat Digital spokesperson in the Lords. www.lordclementjones.org
ILIA DELIO is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, and an American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics, and neuroscience and the import of these for theology. Ilia currently holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University and is the author of twenty books, including "Care for Creation" (coauthored with Keith Warner and Pamela Woods), which won two Catholic Press Book Awards in 2009: first place for social concerns and second place in spirituality. Her book "The Emergent Christ" won a third-place Catholic Press Book Award in 2011 for the area of Science and Religion. Her recent books include "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love" (Orbis, 2013), which received the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a third-place Catholic Press Association Award for Faith and Science. Ilia holds two honorary doctorates, one from St. Francis University in 2015, and one from Sacred Heart University in 2020. www.christogenesis.org/about/ilia-delio/
ANNE FOERST is an Associate Professor for Computer Science at St. Bonaventure University and teaches both the interdisciplinary Core and Honors programs. Previously, she has worked as research scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was also affiliated with the Center for the Studies of Values in Public Life of Harvard Divinity School. While in the artificial intelligence lab at MIT, she served as theological advisor for the Cog and Kismet projects, two attempts to develop embodied, autonomous social robots that resemble human infants in their ability to learn and develop more mature intelligence levels. Anne initiated and directs “God and Computers”, a dialogue project initially between Harvard Divinity School, the Boston Theological Institute, and MIT, and now continued at St. Bonaventure. She is contributing editor for the quarterly magazine Spirituality & Health and is the author of God In the Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God. Anne earned degrees in computer science and philosophy from the University of Bonn, Germany, a master of divinity degree from the Seminary of the Protestant Church in Rhineland, and her Th.D. in theology from the Ruhr-University at Bochum, Germany. www.sbu.edu/academics/faculty/foerst-anne
NOREEN HERZFELD is the Nicholas and Bernice Reuter Professor of Science and Religion at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. She holds degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from The Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in Theology from The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. Herzfeld teaches courses in both the department of computer science and the department of theology at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, reflecting her two primary research interests—the intersection of religion and technology, and religion and conflict. Various topics include computer theory, computer ethics, religion and science in dialog, the spirituality and politics of Islam, and religion and conflict. Herzfeld is the author of In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit (2002), Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-Created World (2009), and The Limits of Perfection in Technology, Religion, and Science (2010). She has also published numerous articles on such diverse topics as cyberspace as a venue for spiritual experience, embodiment as a sine qua non for personhood, the religious implications of computer games, and the prospects for reconciliation among Christians and Muslims in Bosnia. www.csbsju.edu/theology/faculty/noreen-herzfeld
Michael Morelli is Assistant Professor of Theology & Ethics and Program Manager, Life-Long Learning at Northwest Seminary & College (a founding member of ACTS Seminaries, and affiliate of Trinity Western University). He holds a PhD in Theological Ethics from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, is the author of Theology, Ethics, and Technology in the Work of Jacques Ellul and Paul Virilio: A Nascent Theological Tradition (2021), and editor of Desert, Wilderness, Wasteland, and Word: A New Essay by Jacques Ellul and Five Critical Engagements (2023). He publishes and presents on a variety of topics within the fields of theology, morality, culture, politics, and technology. He has also worked in local church ministry and continues to serve the church in a lay capacity. @mchlmorelli
BRENT WATERS is the Emeritus Jerre and Mary Joy Professor of Christian Social Ethics, and Emeritus Director of the Jerre L. and Mary Joy Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois. He came to Garrett in 2001 and retired in 2022. Waters is the author of Common Callings and Ordinary Virtues: Christian Ethics for Everyday Life, Just Capitalism: A Christian Ethic of Globalization, Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman Back to Human, This Mortal Flesh: Incarnation and Bioethics, The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought, From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World, Reproductive Technology: Towards a Theology of Procreative Stewardship, Dying and Death: A Resource for Christian Reflection, and Pastoral Genetics: Theology and Care at the Beginning of Life (with co-author Ronald Cole-Turner), and editor of Christology and Ethics (with co-editor F. LeRon Shults), and God and the Embryo: Religious Voices on Stem Cells and Cloning (with co-editor Ronald Cole-Turner). Waters has also written numerous articles and lectured extensively on the relationship among theology, ethics and technology. He was the recipient of the Paul Ramsey Award for Excellence in Bioethics in 2016. Waters has served previously as the Director of the Center for Business, Religion and Public Life, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is a graduate of the University of Redlands (B.A.), School of Theology at Claremont (M.Div., D.Min.), and the University of Oxford (D.Phil.) www.garrett.edu/directories/brent-p-waters
ROBERT WRIGHT is president of The Nonzero Foundation. He is the author, most recently, of Why Buddhism Is True. His previous book, The Evolution of God (2009), was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Moral Animal, Nonzero, and Three Scientists and Their Gods. He has written for Time, Slate, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. In 2009 Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of the top 100 global thinkers. He has taught courses in philosophy and religion at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. He is Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and is editor-in-chief of the websites Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv. Check out the Nonzero Newsletter.
I’m so excited about this series! I’m a new joiner to the field of AI, conducting corporate research on how AI is going to impact work. I’m also fairly new to my faith and I’ve been heavily wrestling with how I can incorporate my faith and theology into my work. I’m scared for how the future with this technology will play out and believe we need to be approaching this from a theological perspective, but there’s few to no one that I have been able to talk about this with!